The Stranger

ONE

The dark-haired young man came into the diner at 4 a.m., just an hour before Casey Brightwell’s shift ended. He looked nervous and a little confused, but seemed also relieved as he stepped through the door. He was a bit underdressed for the weather, only a tee-shirt, jeans, and a flannel over shirt, despite the fact that there was at least a heavy jacket’s worth of chill outside.

He glanced around, taking in the diner’s sleek white and red décor, and the five other people in the diner. Aside from Casey, there was a tall man standing at the grill, two older men sitting at a table, and an older woman sitting at the counter. Casey noted the young man glance over all of them with a bit of a wary look, then sat down at the far end of the counter, away from them all. He let out a long breath, closing his eyes, then opening them again, to look at the assembled group almost studiously.

The other four gave him a glance, the grill man and the older woman giving him a nod, the two men at the counter continuing their own conversation. Casey, dutifully came up to him and offered a warm smile. “Howdy, stranger. You look like you’ve got yourself a little turned around.”

“That obvious, huh?” the young man said.

Casey nodded. “Only diner around for miles, we get some folks who get lost in the middle of the night. Would you like a coffee?”

He looked at Casey, then back at the others, who were ignoring him, then back at Casey. He gave her a once-over, then hesitantly said, “Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks.” He spoke fluent English, but there was an odd accent to his voice that Casey couldn’t place.

“Are you alright, sir?” said Casey, frowning a bit.

“I think so,” said the man, rubbing his eyes a bit. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”

“I’ll bet,” said Casey. “Wee hours of the morning and all.” She went to fetch the coffee and a mug. “I didn’t see you pull up,” she said. “Did you break down out there?”

The man opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, hesitating. “No,” he finally said.

Casey set the mug down next to him, and he just stared at it for a moment. He glanced back up at her, then back down to it. Casey’s brow furrowed a bit in concern, but she said, “It’s not exactly gourmet, but it ain’t bad.”

The man nodded, then lifted the mug, blowing on the surface a bit before taking a sip. His eyebrows raised a bit. “Actually, that’s pretty good.”

Casey stuck her tongue out. “I can never drink it black. I always need to cream and sugar the hell out of mine.”

The man shrugged. “To each their own,” he said. He set the cup down and stared at it, then looked at the other customers and the man at the grill. Casey looked back to them, and checked their mugs for refills.

“You wan’ somethin’ tuh eat?” grumbled the tall man at the grill, cocking an eyebrow at the new arrival.

“Uh, no, that’s okay,” he said, offering a polite smile. The grill man shrugged, and the new guy started glancing around, frowning a bit. His eyes stopped when he saw the clock. “What the heck?” he muttered.

Casey noticed his gaze and gave him a sympathetic smile. “Later than you thought, huh?”

Once again the man opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, still staring at the clock. Then he turned looked back down at his mug and stared at it.

Casey frowned at this, and leaned over to the older woman at the counter, a regular in her diner. Softly, she said, “He look alright to you?”

The other woman frowned a bit, glancing at the young man. “Seems kind of out of it. I’d be careful.”

Casey nodded, but didn’t feel too worried. She was, after all, a Sex Mage, and in a Sex Mage World, men were of little threat to a woman if he had even a notion of sex going through his mind. And Sex Magic had confirmed that most men did indeed think about sex in some capacity every few seconds. That said, she didn’t detect even a hint of arousal potential from the young man. He was clearly too stressed or freaked out to be thinking of sex, and thus, there was no energy from him for Casey to draw upon.

Still, her colleague at the grill and the two older men at the table were there. If she needed to draw in sexual energy on the fly, she knew they were available. Boldly, she stepped up to the young man and offered another smile. “You can relax, sir,” she said. “Just sit for a bit, finish your coffee, re-orient yourself. If you’re lost, we can try to give you some directions.”

The man nodded. Casey saw him glance around some more. He was sitting closer to the register, where a cup was holding a dozen pens, next to one of the paper pads for taking down orders. He reached over, grabbed the pad and the pens, and quickly wrote a note on it. Tearing it off, he turned it and laid it flat on the counter-top, keeping his hand on the note to hold it down. He slid it over to Casey, in such a way that the other people in the dinner couldn’t see what was written on it

Casey looked down at the paper and read the words: Do you know where you are?

Casey looked up at the man, who was looking her in the eyes intently. Casey took a step back and swallowed, her expression one of confusion and a little bit of growing worry. The man studied her gaze, then looked down and shook his head. He tore up the note and dumped it in the little waste basket just behind the counter.

The young man cleared his throat. “So, um, I am pretty lost. Can you tell me where I am?”

Casey took a breath and composed herself. “Uh, well, if you came from that way,” she pointed to the left of the front entrance, “then you must have come off I-47. If you came from the other way,” she pointed right, “you’ve been winding around on U.S.-5. If you tell me where you’re headed, I might be able to point you there.”

The man scrunched his forehead and rubbed his eyes as if trying to think. “I’m not headed anywhere. I mean, any place will do, as long as I can find civilization.”

Casey fixed him with a curious look. “So, are you hitchhiking or something?”

“No,” he said.

Casey cocked her head to the side. “So how did you get out in the middle of nowhere?”

He hesitated, then said, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Casey. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

The man looked at the other people in the diner, still ignoring him, then back at her. “I’m not sure,” he said. This time, at least, he sounded sincere.

“Alright, well, I’ll give you a few minutes to decide,” said Casey wryly, going back to collect the empty plates from the men at the booth. She kept an eye on the man as he slowly sipped his coffee and stared into the middle distance. A few minutes ticked by before she came back with the coffee pot. “Refill?”

“Where am I?” he repeated.

Casey pursed her lips, but said, “Like I said, if you’ve been coming from—”

“No, I mean, what country am I in?” he said.

“Oh, um, you’re in the Midland Queendom,” said Casey. She offered a small grin. “Don’t tell me, you took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”

The man just gave her a confused look and Casey rolled her eyes with a grin. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you’re one of the five people on Earth whose never seen Looney Tunes.”

The man just blinked at her. Then he glanced back at the clock and his brow furrowed. “Earth?” he said, still staring at the clock.

“Yes, you know, like the planet,” said Casey.

“You’re not on a—” the man visibly forced himself to stop his sentence. When he looked back to the rest of the diner, he almost jumped.

Casey felt a sudden pang of dread seeing his expression, and looked behind her. The other four occupants of the diner had stopped what they were doing, and were staring, unblinking, at the stranger. Casey glanced back and forth between the two sides of the stare down. She had never seen her co-worker, or her customers, with such unreadable, yet intense expressions before.

The stranger cleared his throat and looked down at his coffee, still half-full. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Was going to make a joke, but I forgot the punch line.”

As Casey watched, the other four, in unison, went back to doing what they were doing. Casey felt a bead of sweat roll down her temple. She turned back to the Stranger, who looked up and met her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a voice so low, Casey was sure she shouldn’t have heard it, but it sounded almost like he was whispering directly in her ear. He then got up and started walking towards the door.

“’Ey!” yelled the grill man. “You payin’ for the coffee?”

The stranger stopped at the door. “No.”

“You can’t just—”

Casey cut in, “It’s fine. It’s on the house. Good luck finding your way, sir.”

The stranger turned once more, looking at Casey with an almost pained expression. “You, too,” he said, and finally left.

TWO

An hour later, as the sun was rising, Casey left the diner as her relief showed up, glad to finally go home. She pondered which of her boy toys she’d call up to come rub her feet, and give her the soothing energy of a hard cock. Smiling, she thought of Frank, and sent a thread of magic into the air, which sought out her lover at the speed of thought, and enveloped the stud’s cock. She could sense Frank was asleep, his cock semi-hard. Casey smiled, and let the sensations of softly caressing fingertips coax Frank to full stiffness, pleasurable but wispy strokes making him throb until he jerked awake. He’d know to come to her place, and if he wanted a chance to actually be inside her this morning, he’d already be at her door, kneeling, cock hard for her, before she got home.

Casey smiled as she slid behind the wheel of her red car, a cheap, but serviceable vehicle. She could have always used the energy of her boy toys to just fly herself home, using the powers of Sex Magic to levitate and propel her body through the air, zeroed in on the beacon of her lover’s erection, but that would require much more intense teasing than she wanted to wake him up with. She felt like giving him a slow burn this morning, really build him up and groove off the pleasurable sensations of his naturally increasing arousal.

Such thoughts came to an abrupt end as she felt a hand lock onto her shoulder. Casey jerked in her seat, and tried to pull away, looking behind her and letting out a short cry. There was no one there, but she felt a hand firmly gripping her.

“Calm down,” said a voice. “I need to talk to you.”

Casey, heart pounding, threw her senses behind her, and she felt the body of a man. She focused her magic on the two points within a male that was most vulnerable to her power: his libido and his genitals. Despite the man’s invisibility, her senses led her unerringly to his sexual essence. She sought the spark of arousal that her magic needed in order to affect him. All it would take is the slightest bit of interest, for him to notice her breasts or her legs, to think for just a moment about her lips on his cock, or her straddling him in heat. Even if he wasn’t thinking about sex, just his cock being partially hard would have been enough.

She sensed no such spark. For whatever reason, this man behind her was completely devoid of any sexual interest, and her powers refused to grasp him. But she did sense him. And there were ways a Sex Mage could force such a spark.

“Okay,” she said. “Alright. I’m listening.” As she spoke, she relaxed her body slightly, called up the simple spells currently at her disposal, like an ethereal heat welling up in her body. She then released them, sending psychic commands of arousal to any man nearby.

“I just need you to—” said the voice, but then he suddenly gasped as he felt his penis began to stiffen in his pants, beyond his control.

That did it. Casey threaded her magic through his stiffening cock and commanded his muscles to move exactly as she wanted. The man let go of her shoulder, and was pushed against the back seat of the car, limbs spread as well as he could manage in the confined quarters. Casey pumped more commands into him, even as his erection began to emanate the energy of male arousal. It was weak for the moment, but enough to boost the effect of her spell.

“Ah!” gasped the man. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“I don’t know how you’re doing that invisibility trick, but it won’t save you from my spells,” she said. She turned fully in her seat, gazing at the spot where she sensed the man. She could see him now, if only in her mind’s eye. Her powers sensed his body and gave her a full view of his naked form. She noted his dark hair and took a good look at his face. Her eyes widened a bit. “Hey, you’re that guy from before!”

Then, suddenly, his invisibility spell dropped, and she could see him fully now, his nude form in her mind, and his clothed form in her real vision. She dropped the mental image and focused on his clothed form, though his throbbing cock still hummed its ethereal signal of lust clearly in her mind.

“D-damn it,” hissed the stranger. “Another fucking sex witch.”

Casey frowned. “Sex Witch? Is that what they call us in your Queendom now? We still use the term Sex Mage.” She reached out and brushed the man’s cheek, noting his terrified expression. It actually took her a bit of concentration to keep his cock from wilting out of fear. But she wasn’t about to let him go soft. She still couldn’t sense that spark of mental arousal to control him fully.

Casey relaxed and settled her chin on the head rest, gazing at the man. “So,” she said. “You wanted to speak to me?”

The man grit his teeth. “F-forget it. I thought you were different, but you’re in this all the way, aren’t you?”

Casey frowned. “Sir… sorry, what was your name?”

The stranger scowled, but then gasped as he felt a strange, irresistible tremor of pleasure play along his cock. “J-Jim…” he said.

Casey smiled. “Jim. Look, I don’t know what your issue is, but I would think a man would know what a bad idea it is to sneak up on a girl.” She kept probing his mind for that notion of lust. For any other man, just getting hard around a woman would make them think thoughts of sex, create that spark of lust that would grant a woman access to his mind, to read his sexual memories and fantasies.

But that spark stubbornly refused to show itself. She was forced to keep her magic commands going at will to keep him hard and frozen in place. Even so, Jim began to squirm in place, twitching his muscles and clenching his fists. Casey felt her grip on him weaken. Why the hell wasn’t he aroused at all? Casey sat up a bit and leaned over the seat, making sure he got a perfect view of her cleavage. He just glared at her.

Casey was impressed, and at the same time, a little unnerved. She had never met a man so resistant to Sex Magic, so mentally walled off from its power! Then, she refocused on his eyes, and saw the fear and anger in his expression. There was such an intensity that it startled her and she pulled away from him, her magical grip on his body slipping. It was enough that he was able to break one arm loose from the spell, and immediately thrust out his hand to latch onto her throat.

Casey felt a sharp jolt of panic. This couldn’t be happening! Men were utterly helpless against the power of Sex Magic! How could this stranger be resisting her? How could he act against her? She hadn’t sensed anything like a shield to block her spells, like some women could place over men they wanted to protect. The man clearly had a mind and body with sexual assets. But something about all this, her power seizing him, it awoke an anger and fear in him that obliterated even the start of sexual interest, no matter how hard she made his cock.

“W-wait…” Casey said weakly. She clawed at his hand on her throat. Normally, a man’s erection would charge her body with mystically enhanced strength. But she was weak against him. With no arousal to draw from, she was suddenly as vulnerable as a normal human woman. She was so unused to it, panic welled up inside her, and her magic control slipped away completely. The man broke free of her spell and latched his other hand to her throat.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “You’re either a Sex Witch or some kind of Lust Walker.”

“J-j-jim…” she choked out. “P-pluh-please… sssss-sorry…” Tears welled up in her eyes.

Jim paused. His grip loosened, just enough to let her breathe a little, but all it would take was a single squeeze, and she’d be finished if he wanted her dead. Jim took a moment to calm himself, before saying, “What are you?”

“Wh-what?”

“Your magic. What is it? What are you?” He looked at her studiously. “I’ve seen Lust Walkers up close, been attacked by a couple. Their power is different than this. More brutal.” He looked her up and down. “Not a psychomancer, though. Not a biomancer. Not like her.”

Casey, huffing to get enough air to speak, said, “Please, Jim… I don’t know… what you want… just please… don’t hurt me…” She could barely wrap her head around the idea that she was actually begging a man for mercy. And yet, her whole body trembled, feeling his strong hands around her neck, and the unyielding arms her hands uselessly grasped.

Jim looked her in the eye, and could see only terror in her expression. He frowned, then said, “You try your magic on me again, and I will kill you. Do you understand?” Casey nodded, and Jim let go of her. Both of them sagged back into their seats, Casey coughing a bit to catch her breath, Jim closing his eyes and trying to calm his nerves. They sat there for several moments, before Casey looked over to him, cautiously. She debated jumping out of the car and running back into the diner. Only then did it occur to her that she could have tried coaxing arousal from the men in the bar, her co-worker and a few other patrons that had since entered before she left. She suddenly now knew why horror movie characters always made stupid decisions in the middle of being chased by the monster: terror tended to blot out any sort of tactical thinking.

She began to send little commands of magic to the men, making their cocks stiff with phantom touches, the warm, familiar spark of arousal as images of sex bubbled up in their minds. She didn’t do enough to disrupt what they were doing, but the arousing energy tingled through her as she absorbed it. She felt herself strengthen, felt the soreness of her throat clear up. She squeezed one hand into a fist, and started to rear back for a punch, while Jim still had his eyes closed. With this much energy, she had to be at least as strong as he was; if this blow didn’t knock him out, it’d send him reeling.

“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly. “I’m sorry, really. I just, I don’t know where I am, and you’re not the first woman to use weird sex spells on me.” He opened his eyes and gave her a sympathetic look. “I guess I brought it on myself, startling you like this.” He didn’t say anything about her raised fist, leaving himself wide open to be punched.

Casey paused, her curiosity overtaking her caution, frowning at him. “I told you,” she said. “You’re in Midland. The Midland Queendom.” She glanced him over. “We used to be part of the United States of America, if that helps. Though you sound American yourself.” She dropped her fist, and settled back a bit, kneeling on her driver’s seat, leaned up against the bottom of her steering wheel. “And I’d be very surprised if I was the first woman to use Sex Magic on you, since, you know, every woman on Earth is a Sex Mage.”

Jim gave her a studious look, before saying, “What’s America?”

Casey blinked. “What do you mean, what’s America?” She cocked her head to the side. “You’re not that young. Surely you remember the United States, before the Queens took over?”

Jim shook his head. “You’re not where you think you are. There’s no such thing as America. There’s no Queendoms. There’s no planet called Earth.”

Casey blinked again. “Okay, dude, seriously, are you on drugs or something?”

“No.”

“Then what the fuck are you talking about?”

“You’re not where you think you are.”

“And just where the hell am I?”

Jim looked around the car. The diner’s small gravel lot had a few more cars, and a few people were coming and going throughout the lot. He watched them go, while they completely ignored the two of them.

“Do you know what the Fae Realm is?” he said.

“No. Fae? Like fairy?”

Jim nodded. “You’re not on Earth. Earth doesn’t exist. Or rather, it only exists in this place.”

Casey shook her head. “Seriously, what the fuck are you on? Are you from another Queendom or something? You must be. You must be from one of those freakier nations. Did they brainwash you into thinking you’re on another planet?”

“We’re not on a planet,” said Jim.

“We’re on Earth. Third planet from the sun. Fifteen years ago, Sex Magic appeared, and gave all adult women psychic control of men’s arousal and their cocks. We don’t know why this happened, but it caused such a mess to society, the most powerful women on the planet decided to fix things by dividing up the old nations into their own little Queendoms, to try and maintain order on a smaller scale. Things have been pretty decent since then.”

Jim cocked an eyebrow at her. “All women? You mean, every woman in this world is a Sex Witch?”

“Mage. Sex Mage.”

“Sure. Sorry.”

“Yes. All of us.”

Jim sighed. “What a weird scenario.”

“Hey don’t knock it. Once everything settled down, and society got back on track, it’s been pretty fun. Well, depending on which Queendom you live in. From what I’ve heard, you jumping me like this would earn you a death sentence or a life sentence in a sex torture prison in some Queendoms.” Casey watched his expression and frowned as she saw his brow furrow. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I told you. You’re not on Earth. There’s no such thing. There’s no such thing as Sex Magic. Well, I mean, there is here, but…” Jim glanced around some more. “You’re in a Fae Realm. A false reality created by a powerful fairy. None of this is… well, I mean, it’s real, yes, but you’re not on a planet. You, this whole world, you’re in a giant bubble floating in the greater Fae dimension.”

Casey rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Dude, seriously. I don’t know what kind of cracked out head trip you’re on, if you’re under some kind of illusion spell, if the Queendom you’re from is one of those faux-fantasy world societies, or what, but you’re the one who has no idea what you’re talking about. Fairy Realms? False realities? And what the hell is Lust Walker?”

Jim shook his head. “Useless. I don’t know why I’m bothering trying to reason with you. Even if you’re one of the real ones, of course your memories would be altered.”

Casey paused at that. “What do you mean, real ones?”

Jim scowled. “You’re the only real human being here, at least in this area. Well, besides me, of course.”

Casey decided that was the last straw. “Alright, get out. I can only put up with so much crazy.”

“But—”

She pointed to the car door. “Out! I’m going to go home, fuck my boy toy’s brains out, and forget this meeting ever occurred. You’re going to leave this vehicle, forget you ever saw me, and go be someone else’s problem.”

Jim sighed, and opened the door. “If I find a way to leave, I’ll come back for you.”

“Please don’t,” said Casey.

Jim left the car, pushing the door shut a little more forcefully then necessary. Casey opted not to complain, repositioning herself in her seat. When she was facing the wheel again, she glanced outside to catch a glimpse of Jim, but he was already gone.

THREE

Later that morning, Casey was all but howling in pleasure, hammering her pussy up and down on the diamond-hard, vibrating cock of Frank. Beneath her, Frank could only moan and whimper and clutch at the sides of the bed, his body held spread eagle against the mattress by Casey’s power. The pleasure of being inside her was almost too much for the large, muscular, dark-skinned man, his mind fried by the powerful commands of arousal from her body, body flooded with extreme sensations of pleasure. Every pump of her hips ground the helpless stud against the edge of release, but her magic forced his orgasm to be contained. The blocking spell refused to allow him to cum even as her own body shook and shuddered in orgasm after orgasm.

It had been a while since she had ridden a guy this fiercely, tease-tortured a man this intensely. They were three hours into their romp, Casey using him like a fuck toy, making him eat her out, making him fuck her like a jackhammer, now riding him with a wild fervor. His desperation for relief, his pure, agonizing male need, poured the ethereal energy of lust into the air, energy which Casey absorbed, channeling pure, uncut happiness into her brain, strong enough to rival the feelings of raw physical pleasure she felt as she fucked him. Frank, for his part, was absolutely helpless, only able to let her use him or follow her orders, begging for mercy, to cum, to stop, or even just be allowed to pass out. Casey granted him none of these, riding the high of magically enhanced sex until she decided she’d had enough.

And then, just when Frank thought he was going to die from the sensual torment, Casey released him. She lifted off him and collapsed next to him, sweaty and gasping. His slick cock was still hard as humanly possible, literally vibration with tension from her spells. With a thought, she held him in the peak moment of pleasure, so intense he couldn’t even draw breath to scream. Then, when he was a split second from utterly losing his mind, she broke the orgasm block she’d placed on him.

He exploded, weeks worth of unspent cum shotgunning out of his dick. With the vibrations, the spray went wild, shooting his seed everywhere, all over himself and Casey, all over the bed, even on the wall and headboard. Then she finally allowed him the mercy of passing out.

Leaving her destroyed lover on the bed, Casey let out a contented sigh. With her power, she collected the semen from around the room, floating it into a huge wad in the air above them, before floating it into the bathroom, and down the toilet. Then she snuggled against her lover, sleeping soundly while his poor cock recovered. For a few minutes, she lay there, enjoying the heat and firmness of him.

Then suddenly, she had a feeling that she was being watched. Her eyes snapped open and she noticed Frank go rigid. She looked up to see he was awake, instantly alert, eyes staring over her towards the wall.

Instinctively, Casey cast her senses behind her, and nearly leaped out of her skin when she detected the presence of another man, though the sense was muted. She jerked her head back to look over her shoulder, and let out a squeak of surprise. There, next to the bed, was a roiling mass of shadows, a tall mound of liquid darkness roughly the size of a man. From the upper point of the mass, a face emerged from the dark, looking at her. She recognized the countenance of Jim.

“Miss, there’s no time,” he said. “I found a crack in the wall. I don’t expect you to understand, but you’re the only one I’ve found that I can save. You have to come with me. Now.”

Casey scrambled to the other side of the bed, and Frank rose up, interposing himself between her and the shadow-mass with Jim’s face. The shadow boiled around him, surging like smoke. “Move,” Jim said coldly.

“I won’t let you take her,” said Frank, sternly, with a cold tone that sent a chill down her spine. She back away from Frank, casting her senses over him. Where before, she had sensed the hum of male energy and thoughts, there was now nothing, just a blank space. Frank turned and looked at her with a completely deadpan expression. “Please run, Casey.”

“What the hell is going on?!” she said.

Frank turned back to Jim, who emerged from his cloak of shadows. The mass of wisping darkness stayed in place, but Jim, still dressed in his plainclothes, stepped forward and struck Frank hard in the face. There was a flash of light, and Frank went flying off the bed, barely missing Casey’s body. The large man hit the ground hard enough to roll into the wall, but immediately bounced back to his feet.

“Frank!” said Casey, reaching over to him, only to flinch back as the large man stepped past her like she wasn’t there.

Frank didn’t even spare her a glance as he charged forward, his muscles tensing, his face still blank. With no hesitation, he charged at Jim. Jim vanished into thin air and Frank’s fist hit nothing. Jim reappeared behind him and touched the larger man’s back. A flash of light sent Frank smashing through the window of the opposite wall.

Casey screamed, and threw her power towards both men. Once more, Frank was suddenly untouchable, not even detectable by her magic, while her power seemed to slide off of Jim, grasping him only for her grip to slip off before she could latch a spell onto him. “Stop it!” she said. She looked with worry towards her lover, only for her eyes to widen in shock as he pulled himself away from the shattered window and turned back to Jim, looking only at him.

The jagged glass of the window had left no mark on his body. His cock was soft, with no spells being applied; the physical enhancements and protections of Sex Magic were not active upon him, so how could he be undamaged?

Casey wanted to run up to Jim and smash something over his head, but she suddenly wasn’t sure about the man she’d just been fucking. Frank had always been a sweet, tender guy despite his imposing presence, but now…

Wait… wait, she knew Frank was a nice guy, but… but for some reason, she couldn’t recall exactly what he’d done to make her feel that way. Just one day, they’d started fucking. He was a great lay, but…

“CASEY!” yelled Jim as he did that disappearing trick and sent Frank smashing into the wall again, so hard, his head punched through the drywall. But once again, he remained unfazed, pulling himself away and turning to his opponent. “Casey, run into the portal!”

This time, Frank didn’t charge. He scowled, then reared back his head and opened his mouth wide. A terrible sound, like a scream mixed with grinding metal and breaking glass, sounded from his mouth, an inhuman cry that threatened to split Casey’s head. She clamped her hands over her ears and let out a cry of her own, drowned out by Frank’s horrid yell. Casey felt two strong hands grab her by the shoulders, and suddenly, she was being manhandled over the bed.

Casey looked up to see Jim, a look a pure panic on his face, hauling them both towards the boiling shadows. And to Casey’s horror, she saw other faces. Human faces were emerging from the walls to stare the proceedings. Frank’s inhuman scream stopped, and he immediately charged towards them, his eyes locked firmly on Jim. As Jim pulled her over the bed, Casey felt something try to grab her and saw arms coming out of the bed and the floor, trying to clutch at her.

Jim, holding Casey, couldn’t do his disappearing trick in time, and Frank slugged him in the face, hard enough Casey was sure the man’s skull might have cracked. Jim, already right next to the portal, was thrown into it. His hands locked into a death grip on Casey’s shoulders, and despite the creepy arms clutching at her from the floor, Casey felt herself yanked towards the darkness with him.

And then everything went strange.

Casey felt a sensation as if she was floating. Dazed, she was vaguely aware of being surrounded by swirling light and a dull, pulsing hum reverberating through her whole body. She found it impossible to orient herself. Every time she tried to focus on something, her attention would inevitably fizzle out and she would find herself losing her train of thought. Soon, she lost all sense of time, and just allowed herself to drift in the sea in light that shone even when she closed her eyes. So she drifted on… and on… and on…

And then suddenly, she was falling.

FOUR

The sensation of a fierce, chill wind struck her body as the light imploded away from her with a thunderous boom. She screamed as she tumbled through the air, unable to orient herself. Then, just as suddenly, she was splashing into a body of water. She struck the surface on her back, and the wind was knocked out of her. For several seconds, she was paralyzed, unable to breathe as her body sank beneath the water’s surface. But then, the moment passed, and the mild chill of the water shocked her body back into action. She quickly swam up for the surface, gasping once she breeched it.

“What the… where the hell…?” Looking around while treading the water, she saw only light blue sky and dark blue waters.

Then, she heard a second splash, and she turned to see Jim had landed face down in the water. He wasn’t moving. “Jim!” She swam towards him and forced him to roll over. “Jim, wake up!”

Jim didn’t wake, however. In fact, he started to sink. Casey grabbed him and tried to haul him up by his wet clothes. She realized she herself was still naked, a coincidental blessing, given their current predicament. She debated pulling some of his clothes off as well, but she was already growing tired. Despite how energized she’d been from her morning sex, without any active lust energy around, she was once again a normal woman, one who hadn’t exactly trained herself for physical endurance. Already, as she fought to keep herself and Jim above water, her limbs were beginning to ache with fatigue. Hitting the water as hard as she did hadn’t done her any favors, either, as the pain was starting to really make itself known, now that her adrenalin was leveling out.

Casey looked in all directions; she could not see land anywhere. She was either in the middle of the ocean or an extremely large lake. She was likely going to drown at this rate, and take Jim with her. She looked to the unconscious man. What the fuck was he? For as long as Sex Magic had existed on Earth, she had never heard of a man gaining weird powers of his own. And what had he been going on about, with fairies and people not being real?

“Hey! HEY!” she slapped at his face. He let out what might have been a groan, but didn’t rouse from his stupor. Frank’s punch, the fall, or both, had thoroughly knocked him unconscious, if not given him a concussion. She was tempted to just let him sink for doing this to her, whatever the hell he’d just done, but she was not a killer. Then again, if he didn’t wake up they were both going to drown.

No! No, she would not allow that to happen. She forced herself to relax, and stretched herself out to lay on the surface of the water, floating easily as she filled her lungs with air and took shallow breaths. She kept a grip on Jim, keeping his head above the water, and kept them afloat with as minimum an effort as possible. Then, she slipped a hand between her legs touched herself, feeling the tingle of pleasure in her core. She let that tingle increase to an intense buzzing of sexual tension, and then let that feeling go, flowing from her womanhood into the area around her.

Sex Mages like herself mostly relied on the lust energy of men to cast their spells, but it was possible for a woman to provide a bit of energy, even with their own bodies, to cast some basic tricks. One such trick was an arousal aura, the same thing she’d used to try and bind Jim down in her car. Men’s bodies and minds were helpless to obey the arousal aura, their cocks stiffening intensely, their heads filling with sexual thoughts. She wasn’t sure what made Jim different, but she prayed that he had to be conscious to resist her.

She had her answer a moment later, when she sensed his penis grow hard in mere seconds. She sensed the spark of sexual thoughts in his head. Even in his addled state, she could see carnal notions of women forming in his thoughts. She pushed the signals of arousal harder, concentrating them on his cock, until he was so hard, it was painful!

The energy of male frustration, so delicious to her mystic senses, so energizing, refreshed her body and cleared the anxiety of their situation from her mind. She began to calm, and used the energy to power a couple simple float spells. The two rose out of the water, until they were nearly ten feet above the waves.

Still floating, she proceeded to strip Jim of his clothes, until he was completely naked. She pulled on his shorts and flannel over shirt, while controlling his body to make him hold the rest of his clothes. She made him lay straight, face up, and floated herself on top of him, so that her ass pressed firmly against his intensely stiff cock.

It had been a long time since she’d used a boy as a flying board, but the old sense of balance and control came back to her easily. She settled her weight on him, allowing her to concentrate on saving some energy by only floating him. The rest of the excess energy she directed back into his body, causing him to flush with further arousal. One of the side benefits of Sex Magic was its ability to heal those who were using it, or being targeted by it. By flooding his body with the energy, she was, hopefully, helping him recover from his injuries. It took longer than she had expected, but after several tense minutes, Jim roused, groaning awake.

It took him a minute to realize his situation and he tried to pull away from her. But Casey’s magic held him fast now, and he could nothing but shiver with need, feeling himself throbbing against her denim-clad ass.

“You with me now?”

“Let… go…” he hissed. There was a panic in his eyes that Casey hadn’t seen since the early days of the Magic, when boys were still unable to reconcile the power it gave women.

“Not a chance. I have no idea what the fuck just happened. I want answers.” She leaned forward and touched his head. “It’ll take me a while, I’d have to put you through the ringer, tease you so bad you’d want to cut your dick off to escape it, but I can pull what I need to know from your mind. If you don’t want me to boil your brains through your dick, you will be completely honest with me.”

She leaned back up and looked around. There was naught to see but endless water and sky. “First question, where the fuck are we?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He then cried out as he felt a savage bolt of pleasure through his cock, a sensation of raw sexual stimulation that made him instantly try to cum, only for something force back his orgasm, rebounding the semen back into his balls with the force of a kick.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” she said.

“I don’t know!” he shouted. He tried to look around, and Casey permitted him to turn his head. “I… shit… we’re over the ocean.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” she said. “Alright, well, I can fly us around until we find something to go by. I just hope we’re not that far from land. Before that, though…” she jolted his cock with another pleasure bolt, and couldn’t help but smile at the surge of energy she got as his cock flexed hard against her ass.

“Second question! Who the fuck are you?”

“M-my name is… Jim Dorovan…” he said, gasping. “I’m with the SOS.”

“And who are they?”

“S-supernatural Operations Specialists.”

“And who are they?” She increased the pressure in his cock, turning up the arousal aura until his penis was so hard and swollen with blood, it felt like it was going to burst like an overfilled tire.

Jim grit his teeth. “We’re like… police… military… but we focus on… monsters… and rogue mages… and the fae… and…” he couldn’t go on, gasping as his whole body shuddered from the intensity of his male need. Despite his fear and resistance, he tried to fight Casey’s magic bonds just to try and hump his painfully hard cock against her ass.

Casey stared at him, frowning. The only thing she could read off him was the arousal she was forcing him to feel. Even the sexual fantasies in his head, something Sex Magic would normally let her detect with ease, were fuzzy and elusive, refusing to let her focus on them for more than an instant. She thought she kept getting glimpses of a girl with light purple hair, accompanied by feelings of great affection. Stronger in his thoughts, however, were glimpses of another woman with brown curly hair and a sadistic grin, doing sensually evil things to his cock. These images were accompanied by feelings of intense dread and revulsion.

Casey tried to use the psychic element of the magic to push those memories down, but they kept slipping from her grasp. She decided not to focus on them, and just maintain her line of questions. As loose as her power was on his mind, she didn’t want that lack of grip spreading to his body if he figured out how to refocus his concentration again.

“Okay,” she said. “So, you’re some kind of Ghostbusters/X-Files/Supernatural thing. Got it. Let’s say I believe you for a moment.”

“What are… those…?” he gasped.

“Let’s say I believe you for a moment,” she repeated firmly, not letting him derail her. “Can you explain what the fuck just happened? How did we get here? What the hell happened to my boy? What were those freaky faces and arms coming out of the walls?”

Jim was having a hard time catching his breath. “Please… just… ease… up…” he huffed. Casey frowned, but eased down the tension of his penis, keeping it hard, but not so stiff he couldn’t answer. After catching his breath for a few moments, Jim said, “Okay, this is going to be hard for you to believe. I don’t know how much your mind has been tampered with. But just hear me out before you do anything else to me, okay?”

Casey frowned deeply, but nodded.

Jim swallowed hard, and said, “You said we were on a planet called Earth. But it’s like I told you, there’s no such place. You were inside a simulated reality created by beings from the Fae Realm. The Fae are beings made of pure magic, from an entire reality composed of pure magic. In order to maintain any sense of identity from the rest of their own realm and from others of their kind, some Fae manage to create little pocket realities, like the one you were in. We call such creatures Fae Lords and their little realities Fae Lord Realms. And they will sometimes kidnap people from our world to populate such a realm.”

Casey looked at him like he was on drugs. “I’m sorry, what? That sounds like some dumb kid’s cartoon or video game or something.”

“It’s the truth,” he said. “I swear it. I ended up in that Realm while I was investigating a disappearance. A man was taken from his home, shortly after contacting his ex-wife and claiming he was being harassed by a fairy creature. We suspected it may have been a Fae related kidnapping. I went to scope out his house for evidence. I noticed what looked like a trace of mana, and attempted to study it with my own magic. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but something from the trace must have stuck to me. When I tried to leave the area using a teleport spell, I ended up in the woods near your diner.”

Casey just stared at him. The two floated in the air, only the sound of the gentle waves and the breeze breaking their silence. The man seemed sincere enough, and as Casey thought about it, she was feeling sudden pangs of dread as certain things clicked into place. There had been moments, strange ones, when she’d seen people stop what they were doing, as if forgetting where they were, for just a moment. Their expressions would be blank, until something seemed to click, and they’d go about their activity. There were times when she’d show up at the diner, and for just half a second, she could swear everyone was just sitting or standing, frozen in place, as if waiting for something to trigger them to move. There were even times she recalled feeling watched when no one was there. She wasn’t sure if she was actually remembering this, or if Jim’s words were starting to freak her out to the point she was just thinking she remembered it.

“Jim, when you said I was the only real person there, what did you mean?” she said.

Jim hesitated for a moment before saying, “The people you were hanging out with weren’t real. The people at the diner? Fake. They weren’t even lesser Fae, they were magical constructs. Robots made to look like people.”

“That’s impossible,” said Casey. “I’ve worked at that diner for years, I—”

“How many?”

“Twelve,” she said.

“How old are you?”

“23.”

“You’ve been working at a diner since you were 11?”

Casey paused. Why had she said twelve years? “Wait… wait no, I… no, I’ve only been there since I was 18, so… five? Five years?” She looked down at him, a look of confusion on her face. “But I… I’ve know Joe since he was…” She held up a hand and ticked numbers off on her fingers, then scratched her head. “Joe was… um…”

“What’s his last name?” Jim’s voice was firm now, staring intently at Casey.

Casey blinked. “I… I don’t… I don’t know…” She shook her head. “I’ve been working with him for twelve… no five… five years, and I can’t remember his… his last name…”

Jim nodded, and raised his hands, placing them on her shoulders. Casey started, as she realized he’d just broke her binding spell. And then, she realized she’d already turned the arousal aura down so low, his cock was barely at a regular erection. The water was now several feet closer.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Just stay calm. Keep us in the air, okay? I saw enough of that world to figure out how the Sex Magic thing works. You keep me hard, and you can use my body to float, and do other crazy things, right?”

“Um… y-yeah…” said Casey. She raised her aura up a bit, and Jim winced as he felt his cock stiffened fully again.

“Okay,” he said. “Think back. The clocks in your diner. They were weird, right? Twelve numbers on the face.”

Casey’s brow furrowed. “What? That seems normal to me.”

Jim paused. “Really?” he said.

“Um, yeah, that’s how we’ve always had them,” she said. “I mean, that seems right.” She thought hard for a moment. “Yeah, yeah that makes sense.” She shook her head. “But never mind that! Why can’t I remember my co-worker’s last name? I can’t remember any of our customers’ names!”

“They’re called Pantomimes. They make up most of the living things in a Fae Lord Realm. They’re just robots, made out of magical energy given solid form. I could detect it with my own mystic senses. You don’t remember their names, because their names aren’t important. They’re just background characters. Details to flesh out the world, so people like you don’t realize you’ve been kidnapped. The guy in your house, though…”

“Frank?”

“Yes. I think he was a Fae. A normal one, not the Fae Lord. Sometimes, they help populate a Realm. Unlike a Pantomime, they can think and act outside of their preset commands.”

“So what were those faces and arms coming out of the floor?”

“I don’t know. Other Fae? That scream was probably an alarm call for when someone like me shows up. I got there by accident, so I wasn’t part of the Fae Lord’s design for the place.”

Casey stared at him for a long time, keeping his cock throbbing with her power, having a difficult time reading anything in his mind. He seemed honest, but there was nothing sexual about this situation or what he was telling her, and the psychic haze around him already muddled her senses. The look in his eyes seemed sincere, but this was a little too much craziness to fully accept.

“Alright,” she said. “So, you can teleport. Can you teleport us to land?”

“I don’t know where we are,” he said. “My power is mostly line of sight, if I’ve got a lock on something specific, or wherever the last place I’ve been is.” He paused. “If I can get to a phone, I try to contact my girlfriend, get a link to her, and go to her that way.”

“Alright,” she said. “I’m going to try to fly us to land.” She paused and looked around, then sighed. “I haven’t the faintest idea where to go.”

Jim looked around again, but there was no sign of any landmarks, and with the sun high in the sky, there was not even an easy way to tell which direction was which. “Fuck,” he said. “I dunno, fly that way, I guess.” He jerked his thumb back, in the direction Casey was facing. Casey using her power to push his body headfirst through the air, flying a few dozen feet above the water. He winced as the tension in his cock spiked. “H-hey, ease up a bit, could you?”

Casey set her lips into a thin frown. “Sorry. Need to keep you hard to keep the magic strong. You won’t open up to me, so I have to force it. You’re going to have to deal with it.”

Jim set his jaw but accepted this for now. An hour went by. Then two. Then three. Only the sound of the ocean, the soft rush of wind, and Casey’s grunts of frustration broke the silence between them. Jim had gotten used to the forced erection, and had his eyes closed, trying to rest, as well as concentrate. Casey had noticed an image of the purple-haired girl she’d sense before blooming strongly in his mind.

Casey looked down at Jim and frowned a bit. She still wasn’t sure about him, but she had to do something to take her mind off the alternating tedium and anxiety of traveling over a mysterious ocean. “Who’s that?” she said.

“Who’s who?”

“The girl in your mind,” she said.

Jim’s eyes opened and he gave her a bit of surprised look. “You’re psychic?”

“A little,” said Casey. “Sex Magic lets us see men’s sexual fantasies and memories. I take it you’ve slept with that woman?”

Jim blushed slightly. “She’s my girlfriend,” he admitted.

“Ah,” said Casey. “Of course.”

“So your powers…” said Jim.

“Yes?”

“How do they work?”

Casey frowned. She still couldn’t quite believe this man. Sex Magic was so ubiquitous in her world, it was almost like trying to explain to a person how walking or breathing worked. “When men get aroused, they give off a sort of energy. Women, Sex Mages, we can absorb that energy, and it lets us cast spells. The power focuses on sex, allowing us to control men’s bodies and minds through their dicks and their libidos. The more we’re exposed to a specific man, the greater our control, and the more sexually frustrated he is, the stronger and more plentiful the energy he generates is.”

“Interesting,” said Jim, giving her a studious look. “And women? Can you affect other women?”

“Only if we allow it. Like, I’d have to specifically lower my defenses. Otherwise we’re immune to each other. And we don’t generate nearly as much energy for use as men.”

“I see. Anything else?”

Casey paused, looking at him suspiciously. “Why do you need to know?”

“Just curious.”

Casey shrugged. “The magic causes a healing effect. By absorbing your energy, it refreshes me, makes me stronger, for as long as the energy is flowing. And it heals the person affected by it. So don’t worry about me keeping your dick hard for hours. You’ll be fine.”

“I see.” Jim kept looking at her with that studious expression. At the same time, the image of the purple haired girl was still strong in his mind, though still frustratingly blurry to Casey’s senses.

“What’s her name?” said Casey.

“Who?”

“The girl in your head!”

“Can’t you tell?”

Jim kept his eyes locked on Casey’s. She squinted, as if trying to physically see into his brain, but the harder she looked, the blurrier the image got. No more information was forthcoming. “I don’t… I can’t seem to…”

“Then it’s none of your business,” he said firmly. He winced as Casey’s power spiked his dick again, making his briefly hard enough to hurt. But he kept his cool.

“Fine,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. They were still hanging over an ocean, after all. Getting angry at him, and him resisting as well as he could, would break her concentration too much. She looked around again, looking for something, anything to indicate land. All she saw was endless blue on blue. Jim nodded and closed his eyes. He maintained the image of the purple-haired girl in his head. Casey had never flown extensively before, but the constant flow of energy ensured she wouldn’t get tired, however long she kept them going.

Several more hours went by, even as Casey got them up to a cruising speed of about hundred miles per hour. She squinted through the onrushing wind, scanning the horizon with her eyes and her sexual senses. The ocean continued to softly ripple around them. At one point, she saw a massive, elongated shape graze the surface. She made a point not to be distracted by it, telling herself is was some kind of whale. She couldn’t quite put out of her mind, however, the glimpse of huge catfish-like whiskers coming off its snout. Nor the fact that thing looked larger than any whale she’d heard of. She likewise avoided looking too closely at a school of huge manta-rays with an x-shaped fin arrangement, skimming the surface of the water, instead of swimming under it.

She was almost about to take a break and try another conversation, just to ease the sheer monotony, when she suddenly sensed a hard dick, other than the one she was sitting on. Actually, make that several hard dicks. The signals were coming from her forward right, and she turned towards them, streaking fast towards what she hoped would be an island.

Instead as she neared, she found the next best thing: a cruise ship! Letting out a whoop of excitement, she shot towards it like a human missile, glad for any sort of human contact. Jim, who’d been half-asleep the whole time, jerked awake as he felt his body shift direction and arc up into the air. Then, suddenly, the two of them were setting down on the ship’s large deck, startling several dozen people.

Casey stood tall, stretching out of habit, even though she didn’t actually feel stiff thanks to the Magic. Jim, finally released from her power, rolled onto his feet and stood tall. Then, as several people averted their eyes or blushed, he was reminded of his nudity and blushed hotly. Instantly, a cloak of shadows appeared around him, wisping and rippling like silken darkness, covering all of him accept for his head. Casey still had on his shorts and shirt, but he gathered up the rest of his clothes from where he’d dropped them on the deck. They were still damp, despite the trip.

“Well,” said Casey, smiling at him, “Quite the stroke of luck, huh? Think there’ll be a—”

“Hey! HEY! You two! Stay right where you are!” three men in sailor’s uniforms strode quickly and purposefully towards them. Casey jumped back, hitting the railing. She looked to Jim.

“It’s alright!” Jim said, holding up his arms, letting them slip out from the cloak of shadows. He took a step forward to ensure they reached him first. “Please! We’re not ship jumpers! We got stranded at sea and we’re just trying to make it back to land!”

The lead man grabbed Jim by his shoulders and forced him to stand tall. Jim didn’t resist as the man, at least a head taller and quite muscular, leaned down and gazed deeply into Jim’s eyes. Jim swallowed and stayed calm as he could while the man stared at him. The man then nodded and released him, turning back to the other two. “I sense no deceit. His memories are a bit befuddled, but he has been stranded from a teleportation accident.”

“Alright,” said another of the sailors. He looked at Casey, who held up her hands.

“Not here to cause trouble, uh, officer,” she said. The man gave her a curious once over, but nodded. Casey resisted the urge to use her own magic to influence him. She had no idea what the situation was.

“We can give you two some food and one of the unused guest rooms to rest,” said the first man. “We are two days from Hawkins Isle. If you are unable to leave under your own power, we can take you there, and you can find your own travel arrangements.”

“Thank you very much,” said Jim.

“Yes, thank you,” said Casey. The two let the sailors escort them to a small room several decks below.

FIVE

It was a tiny room with two small bunk beds, but it would do. Jim arranged for some sandwiches to be delivered via room service, and sat down heavily on the bed opposite Casey. Casey noted the shower. “You wanna clean up?” she said.

“You go ahead,” he said.

Casey paused. “You want to join me?”

Jim practically jumped at that. “Excuse me?”

“Do you want to join me?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“Why?”

 “So you don’t have to wait.”

Jim looked at her a little uncomfortably. “I’d rather.”

Casey shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it’s not like I haven’t already sat on your bare dick for half a day.”

“Yeah, pretty sure my girlfriend isn’t going to appreciate that,” he said. “Not that I do, either.”

Casey scowled. “It got us to safety, didn’t it? I’m sure she’ll understand.” Her scowl became a smirk. “Besides, it’s only cheating if the guy cums.”

Jim flinched and looked away. “I get it.”

Casey’s scowl came right back, and she sighed. She stripped her clothes off and went into the shower, leaving the door ajar. She wasn’t usually so eager to reveal her body to boys; even with Sex Magic, sometimes the most devastating way a woman could tease a man was to keep her body a secret. But he had already seen her naked, if briefly, and part of her wanted to tempt him to look again, just to kick him in the libido.

After a few minutes letting the clean water calm her down, she did somewhat regret her decision, though she noted Jim had made a point to face away from the shower, ensuring he couldn’t see. He continued to boldly keep the purple-haired girl foremost in his thoughts. Sensing this, Casey scolded herself, and made sure she was tightly wrapped in a towel when she came out.

Jim hadn’t bothered dressing, instead collecting his wet clothes and belongings together in the metal wastebasket, and keeping his cloak of shadows active. It was a rather creepy effect, the cloak, and she was grateful when he let it drop, instead vanishing with another invisibility spell. She heard him step into the shower, likewise not closing the door, since he knew he could not protect his modesty from her. She watched as the water seemed to disappear for several feet as it entered the range of his invisibility spell, then reappeared behind and beneath as it splashed around him.

There was a knock on the door and Casey answered it promptly. A tall young man presented a tray with sandwiches and some juice bottles. He blinked, and then his eyes went wide as he saw Casey, dressed only in the thin towel. She gave him a warm smile. “Thank you very much, sir,” she said, giving him a slight bow as she took the tray. She sensed his cock lurch to life, going half hard quickly as he noted her barely-contained cleavage.

“Uh, n-no problem!” the young man said, blushing deeply, but unable to keep his gaze off her breasts.

Casey cocked an eyebrow at him. “Sir, you work on a cruise ship, surely you’ve seen thousands of breasts before.” Unbidden, she sensed the young man’s thoughts, a memory of a time when he’d similarly given room service to a young couple, and the woman had answered the door nude. And in that case, he’d been invited inside, where he’d been allowed to join a drunken foursome. Casey grinned. “Well, I think we’re good here. Thanks again.”

“Y-yes, ma’am, I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, quickly running off. Casey could sense his cock was now fully hard and he planned to tend to it post haste. She was tempted to give him a little jolt of pleasure to spur him on further, but she chided herself. This wasn’t the time or place to be indulging in childish pranks. Not yet, anyway.

More noteworthy, though, was that reading him had been a simple as any man she’d known. Wherever they had ended up, Jim appeared to be the exception to resisting her power. Perhaps it was only his own magic that enabled his resistance; that and the fear that had gripped him earlier.

Speaking of, she heard the water turn off, and him stepping out, grabbing the other towel to dry off. She turned and set the tray on the tiny side table at the foot of the bunk beds. “Order up,” she said. She heard a rustling, and turned to see the top bunk’s bed sheet slide off the top bunk, disappear as it was dragged into Jim’s invisibility spell. A few more rustling sounds, and Jim popped back into view, now wearing the bed sheet as a makeshift toga. He reached for a sandwich and juice bottle, and made a point to avert his eyes from her. She could feel a slight niggling of interest in her scantily clad form, despite all his earlier resistance. Perhaps now that things were calmer, his defenses were lowering, and the fact that she’d quite literally ridden and teased his body for hours before was starting to finally have an impact on him.

When he sat down on the lower bunk, she sat next to him on his left, crossing her left leg towards him, sitting to make sure he had a fantastic view of her cleavage, and an almost full view of her thighs, as the towel strained to contain her curves. Barely a quarter inch of cloth even covered her groin; if her legs hadn’t been crossed, Jim would have only needed to lean forward a couple inches to see right up between her legs.

“Stop that,” muttered Jim, immediately catching on and looking to the side. “Put some clothes on.”

“They’re all wet,” Casey muttered.

“Then wear a bedsheet, like me.”

Casey looked at him, frowning, but he refused to indulge her. She let out a short huff, slipped a finger beneath the top of the towel, and gave it a tug. The cloth fell away, revealing her full nakedness. She leaned back a bit and uncrossed her legs. “You know,” she said. “For putting me through all this, I really should be making you grovel naked at my feet.”

“I saved you,” Jim said softly, squeezing his eyes shut.

“So you say,” she said. “Letting you see me naked so soon, and letting you kiss my feet, would certainly be quite the reward for some.”

“I have a girlfriend!” he said.

“I don’t really care,” said Casey. “I’m not the home wrecking type, but right now, I’m not in the mood to play nice.” With that, she let her power flow. Pure arousal flowed from her nude body, radiating straight from her sexual being, to wash over his.

The spark of interest was there. He was more vulnerable than before. She reached her magic inside and began to coax that flame of interest…

…and then, she felt it vanish. She blinked, and reached out with the tendrils of psychic power that usually let her read a man’s erotic mind like an open book. But she found nothing. She pressed deeper, sought more closely, and for a moment, she thought she could detect the fuzziest of thoughts about sex. But then, they too faded, like a door being shut in her face.

Jim vanished once more, and Casey narrowed her eyes at him, and she instead tried to sense his body, letting her sexual senses give her a mind’s eye view of his nude form. For a moment, she saw him clearly, but then that image, too, became fuzzy, dwindling into a sort of mental haze. She tried to latch onto him with her power, but every attempt seemed to slip off, until suddenly, she realized she couldn’t sense him at all any more. Her power could not affect him. She reached out to the space he’d been sitting.

“Put some clothes on,” came Jim’s voice, directly into her ear, opposite to where he’d been sitting. She jerked back, startled that he’d somehow moved to the other side of her without a sound. But then, his voice whispered in her other ear. “Do I have to make you invisible?”

Casey jumped again, right off the bed. “St-stop that! Where are you? How are you even doing that?”

Jim’s voice seemed to ripple and dance through the air around her, never letting her focus on where he actually was. “I am a Shadowmancer,” he said, the words reverberating strangely. “I wield powers of illusion.”

“A few light and sound tricks shouldn’t keep me from sensing you!”

“Your power seems partially psychomancy, partially biomancy. I have learned to defend from both.” Jim suddenly appeared right in front of her, holding a second bed sheet, and keeping his eyes locked on her face. She hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed the sheet, or even gotten up from his seat. “You cannot touch me,” he said. “Now please, get dressed.”

Casey dumbly took the sheet and wrapped it around herself. Then she took the pillowcase from the lower bunk and tied it around her waste like a sash, enough to keep her curves visible, while keeping the sheet from falling open.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Whatever.” She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I still don’t fully believe you about all this, you know. You may be the only man I’ve seen who has his own powers, but all this junk about fairies and realms and Earth not existing, I just can’t fathom it.”

“Now that you’re out of that Realm, it should come to you. The very few people we’ve managed to free from the Fae stay foggy for a bit, then start waking up. But I assure you, there’s no such planet as Earth. You’re on Civero.”

She blinked, her forehead furrowing with a confused look. “Civero?”

“That’s the name of our world,” he said. “It’ll come to you.”

She shook her head. “Too weird,” she said. “Even if all that Fae junk you said seemed plausible, that just doesn’t seem to add up to me. I’m from Earth.”

Jim sighed. “Fine. Earth. Whatever.” He glanced around, then noticed a little clock on the wall, just above the side table. He reached over, plucked it off its hook, and presented it to her. Casey blinked, then took it from it, studying it. There were ten numbers on the face, with ten notches between each number. Her confused look remained.

Glancing up she said, “What is this?”

“It’s a clock.”

“No it isn’t. The layout isn’t right.”

“You just don’t remem—”

“No, this I’m certain of. There’s supposed to be twelve numbers on the face, five notches between each.”

Jim frowned deeply, then took the clock back and sighed again. “Alright,” he said. “It seems they got inside your head even deeper than normal. It’s okay, though. My girlfriend is a psychomancer. A telepath. So’s our boss. They should be able to help you.”

Casey held up her hands. “Dude, enough. I’m just gunna go get some air, okay?”

Jim’s frown deepened a bit. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Casey scowled and crossed her arm. “You’re not keeping me prisoner in this room,” she said. “It’s a cruise ship, in the middle of the ocean. Where would I run to?”

“I’m less worried about that, and more worried about other people finding out about you. For one, if they know you’re Fae-touched, they may freak out. Fae are trouble, and people influenced by them can be dangerous; even if you’re not, they don’t know that. And too be fair, neither do I. More importantly, if you use your Sex Mage powers, they may get the wrong idea and think you’re a Lust Walker.”

Her scowl became a frown to match his. “And just what is that?”

Jim mulled over how to explain it, in the simplest terms. He settled on, “They’re like Sex Mages, but they’re predatory. You say that your magic uses Lust Energy generated by men to power your spells? Lust Walkers do something similar, except when they absorb the energy, they also suck out the victim’s life force. They drain their magic, too, if they’re a Mage like me.”

“So, they’re like some kind of vampire-succubi?”

“Something like that. I can tell from how your power worked on me that you aren’t one. But Lust Walkers demonstrate similar abilities to you, and I don’t think anyone else here is likely to listen if you deny it. Lust Walkers are considered monsters; we’re supposed to kill them on site.”

Casey swallowed nervously. “Jesus. What kind of world is this?”

“One you should be very careful in until we can get everything sorted out,” he said. “I mean it. Do not use your powers on anyone here. Don’t say anything that will hint that you’ve been Fae-touched.”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” she said. “I promise. Now, can I please leave? I’m feeling a little claustrophobic in here.”

Jim seemed to ponder it for a moment, then slowly nodded. The two of them left the room, Ashley coming out first. “I’m going to find a phone,” said Jim. “Just—”

“I know,” said Casey, irritably. “I’ll be careful.” So saying, she quickly turned and started down the hall before he could say any more. Jim watched her go for a moment, sighed again, and went the opposite way, to try and catch one of the crew.

SIX

Casey leaned against the railing of the ship’s forward, looking down into the waters. A school of what looked like long, thickly bodied eels, a double pair of leaf-shaped fins, was swimming alongside the cruise ship, much in the way she’d seen dolphins do in some nature videos. She was really, really hoping that she’d just not paid enough attention to those nature documentaries. She’d never seen or heard of these creatures before. But it was too ridiculous. There was no way she was on some other planet.

Maybe the creatures were part of one of the weirder Queendoms. She’d heard the rumors once, of some Sex Mage’s who used their powers to turn themselves and their men into animals or animal-people hybrids. “Furries” they usually called them. But her senses didn’t detect anything from the creatures below, and she couldn’t imagine anyone would just hang out this far into the ocean as some kind of weird fish thing.

No one else who was watching the creatures, taking pictures and commenting on them as they leaned over the rails, seemed surprised at their presence, though. Maybe they were just one of the lesser known animals out there that just didn’t get reported on due to their rarity, and people’s general lack of interest. She really hoped that was true.

She sighed, not sure how she was going to get back home. Who knew how far Jim had teleported them? She was damned if she was going to let him try to teleport her back. Who knows where they might end up? The people on the ship were a fairly even mixture of white, black, and brown skinned folks, as well as a few couples who looked Asian. A cruise ship, of course, would likely have plenty of foreigners. Most of the bits of conversations she’d heard were English, though some sounded like Spanish or Russian, not that that she knew either language well. Still, there was a slight accent to everything that she just couldn’t place.

She hadn’t been standing there by ten minutes, when a young man smelling lightly of booze slid up next to her on the rail. She glanced at him, easily sensing his intent. He was half-hard in his shorts already, and given the loopy grin he had on his face as his eyes zeroed in on her chest, she didn’t even need her powers to know what was coming.

“You lookin’ lonely there, sweetie,” he said. “What’r’ya up to?”

“Nothing to do with you, sir,” she said. Instinctively, she almost sent a squeezing sensation to his nuts. Back at home, such a spell usually shut down any guy in their right mind from bothering a woman. But she hesitated. Jim had said not to use her powers at all, lest they think she was some kind of weird succubus monster. But there was no way it was true, was it? She couldn’t be on some alien planet? Weird eel-things in the water aside, it was just too ridiculous. Still, she was in unfamiliar territory.

“Hey, come on,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I just thought ya might like some company.”

She shrugged his hand off and frowned. “Normally, you’d be right, but it wouldn’t be with you.” She turned so her back was partially facing him.

“’Ey, come on,” he insisted, and moved to grab her shoulder again.

Before she could stop herself, instinct kicked in, and she lashed out with her power. The man froze in place, seized by her magic, as his kick snapped to full erection. He let out a little squeeze as his eyes widened, but she clamped down his ability to speak. Casey paused before she did anything more, and glanced around.

None of the other women seemed to have noticed what she’d done. For that matter, now that she thought about it, she was a little surprised that she hadn’t sensed too many other erections throughout the ship. She’d been led to believe that cruises like this were hot beds for Sex Mages to tease and torment their boys relentlessly, driving them crazy and laughing all the way. Unless this was a specifically Magic-less themed cruise, she was a little startled at the lack of such activities. The only hard-ons she sensed were “normal” ones, as various guys got excited seeing girls sunbathing on the deck in their bikinis or skimpy shorts and tops. As she cast out her senses further, she did detect a few couples having sex, but there didn’t seem to be any magic involved. Casey frowned deeply, then turned back to the man still frozen next to her, arm still raised and panic still on his face.

Casey glanced him over. He was hardly the cutest guy here, with a lanky body and boyish face, but it seemed like most of the other guys already had a girl with them. She peeked inside his head to confirm that he was single. Ouch, single and a virgin! And a lot more nervous without the booze. She slipped a few more probes into his head and pulled out some details, even as she begin to make him feel delicate touches to his cock. The poor, helpless boy let out a shaky breath as his suddenly sensitive cock felt the lovely touch of fingertips lightly tickling his shaft. She made the boy drop his arm and turn to face the ocean, even as she did the same.

At a glance, it would look like they were just leaning on the rail, enjoying the view together, but anyone looking close would see he was trembling, making little twitches of his hips. Anyone with a proper side view would definitely notice the tent in his shorts jumping and flexing repeatedly.

Her magic touched him more firmly now, the sensation of fingers stroking him smoothly and steadily. The young man, Harold she discovered his name was, closed his eyes and was lost in the sensations. It was as though he’d never felt a magical touch like this before. Casey worked him to a steady stroking, making his male mind open up to her the more excited and stimulated he got. Then, as she sensed him approach climax, she placed an orgasm block on him just and case, and held him at the edge. He started to whimper pitifully, but she forced him to stay silent.

Glancing around quickly, she noticed that again, none of the other women were taking notice. It was possible they just didn’t care, but in a setting such as this, she expected to see a few chuckles or a thumbs up. Or maybe some disapproving stares, if this was supposed to be a Magic-free cruise. But no one seemed to notice.

Turning her gaze back to the ocean, she let her gaze settle into the middle distance as she psychically probed Harold’s mind. The helpless young man could do nothing to resist as her magic teased his cock without relief, and her psychic probes whispered through his brain, making him shudder in a strangely euphoric mental haze.

Okay, so, what did this poor, helpless boy know? Sex Mages usually could only sense men’s sexual thoughts, things like their knowledge of history and geography weren’t something a woman could sense unless she’d been active enough with him to achieve deeper telepathy. But even with a fresh boy, a little determination meant she should at least manage to pluck out some surface details. She just had to find things linked to sexual memories.

Okay, sifting through… hmm….

Pornography. Looking at girls from around the world. What countries were they from? She saw the lists… Argonia, Bellamy, Curran, Sarkovia, Ellyssia, Hylan, Iteru, Atla… and… that was it? Wait, no… there was… Zoaheim… but those pictures weren’t of humans, but of animal-people, like the “furries” she’d heard about back home… no, not furries… Demihumans…

Demihuman… new memory… Harold finding out his crush, the girl next door, had been sleeping with a cat-man Demihuman… being disgusted by the thought, but unable to stop from masturbating to the thought of his crush being ravished by such a powerful male…

Power… magic… Metahumans… Mages and Psychics…

Harold’s cousin… he’d heard the stories… a cocksure dickhead who’d cheated on three girls, only for them all the find out, and worse, for them all to be mages… not Sex Mages, but like Jim… possessing strange powers independent of sex… yet coincidentally enough using those powers to torment their mutual, cheating boyfriend in revenge…

So they had powers… what about other women… women… magic women… Sex Magic… nothing… Harold had no memories of Sex Mages… had never considered the term… he did know about Lust Walkers, though… most of what he’d seen was from a movie series called… called… Dusklight… obvious fictional, like those vampire romance novels back home… except Harold knew Lust Walkers were real…

So what were they? Succubi… sexual vampires… common belief they were a curse, set into the world during the… the… war…? Some kind of ancient war…? Non-sexual, details fuzzy… Lust Walkers a recent resurgence, however…

Casey frowned deeply, bringing herself out of the probe. This was ridiculous. What the hell was with this boy? She glanced over to him and saw tears were forming in his eyes. Her handjob spell was going rapidly now, holding him right on the brink of release, held back by her block. He was clearly not used to such treatment; was it even possible that a man, even a young man, wouldn’t have gotten at least a little use to such teasing by his age? She stood tall, stretched lazily, and walked away from the rail. As she went back inside to find another area to hang out, she popped his orgasm block and released him from his freezing spell, leaving him to collapse onto the ground and shriek as he came harder than he ever had before, utterly drenching his shorts. When he was able to walk again, he’d be in a rather embarrassing predicament as the people around would wonder just what he’d been up to. As she released him, though, she also dashed his mind with a bit of psychic haze, to make him forget what she looked like. This way if she bumped into him again later, he wouldn’t remember her, or least wouldn’t connect her with his sudden public orgasm.

She went through the hall, down to the wide open lobby area, where a bar and various gambling tables were set up. She glanced around, seeing people milling about, smiling and nodding politely to anyone whose eye she caught, but making sure to keep her gaze roaming so it didn’t look like she was picking anyone out in particular.

She idly walked through the area, trying to catch whatever details she could. She noticed more than a few glances in her direction, her bed sheet toga catching people’s gaze, but she didn’t let it phase her. She was going to have to find some actual clothes soon, though. She wondered if there was a gift shop, then remembered she had no money. Speaking off, she took note that the bills people were passing around didn’t look like any currency she recognized. It was colorful and more square, with different coins. It wasn’t enough to convince her, though, as she knew a lot of countries had more colorful dollars.

She kept walking around, until she sensed another hard cock. Tracing the signal, she went back out onto the deck near the rear of the ship, found an empty reclining chair to sit on, and let her senses focus on the cock. She was able to see a couple in their cabin, the woman giving her husband a blowjob. She was enthusiastic, but wasn’t quite experienced enough; while he was staying perfectly hard, she just wasn’t getting him close, and it was frustrating both of them a bit. Casey smiled, a settled a touch of magic on his dick, making him more sensitive. The man gasped and his hips bucked a bit. Encouraged by this sudden progress, the girl continued her efforts more vigorously. Casey took the time to dive into the man’s head, using the pleasure of the blowjob to mask her efforts.

She saw much of the same information. Knowledge of magic powers that men and women could get, knowledge of a race of beast-people called Demihumans, a mention of Lust Walkers, though he knew even less than the Harold boy had. Casey felt a little pang of panic. Just what in God’s name was all this? Had she landed in a Queendom where all the men were given false memories of another world? That had to be it. Had to be. For one thing, if she really was from Earth, and this was some planet called Civero, why would humans be here? She knew she was from a planet called Earth, she knew it. Whatever else she was beginning to doubt about Sex Magic and Fae and whatever the hell else Jim had been going on about, she knew she was from a planet called Earth, on a continent called North America, where the clocks had twelve numbers on the face.

She cast her senses out to others, finding men in relative privacy and forcing them hard, teasing them with spells so she could peak in their minds. Over and over, the same information about the world. By the time she was done, having teased at least forty cocks, the sun was going down. She cut the connections and waited, looking up at the sky, until the sun faded, and the stars began to shine.

She felt herself grow cold as looked up and tried to spot the familiar constellations. None of them stood out to her. She’d never really paid that much attention to the stars, but she knew how to find the more obvious constellations. The Dippers, Orion, Hercules, Draco. She couldn’t see any of them. Moreover, she saw a particularly bright star with a bluish tint. And then, she blinked as two more shapes started to peek out from the horizon. One was a large bright disk with a slightly orange cast, the other a silvery dot that trailed directly behind it, even brighter than its larger companion. It took her a few seconds to figure out she was looking at a moon. But it was not the Moon she had grown up seeing in the sky. The dark patches were different, the orange hue didn’t fade as it rose into the sky, as if that was its actual color, and not a trick of planetary shadows.

Casey gazed at the site for a long time, too stunned to know what to say or think. She let herself drift to sleep on the chair, heedless of the other people still out on the deck.

SEVEN

Casey dreamed of Frank, of teasing and dominating him. Then other boys had been there, several of her lovers from over the years, all kissing her feet and groveling before her, diamond hard dicks buzzing away, their energy making her feel so good…

Someone shook her awake. Her eyes snapped open and she instinctively cast out her senses to catch whoever was touching her. She sensed nothing, and in her haze of half-consciousness, was not prepared to see Jim looming over her. She jerked back so hard, she almost fell off her chair.

As she blinked to full wakefulness, Jim grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “What the fuck did I tell you?” he said, glaring at her. “Why did you use your powers like that?”

Casey shook her head to clear the grogginess, and glared back. “I was looking for information! I just couldn’t believe you about being on another planet! So I went poking around in guys’ heads to figure things out. I can’t read minds unless they’re excited, so I had to cast a few tease spells, alright?” She blinked as she saw his expression.

Jim was livid. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her across the deck. She tried to grasp him with her powers, but he seemed to have perfected his shield against her. Her Sex Magic was useless. He yanked her into a corner tucked under one of the outer stairwells and all but shoved her against the wall. Casey noted that no one else on the deck paid attention to them; Jim must be keeping them invisible and silent with his own magic.

Jim almost growled at her. “You can’t just molest people like that! I won’t have it!”

Casey shoved him back, though with little success, only enough to make him take his arm off her. “What else was I supposed to do?” she said. “I didn’t cock torture them!” She paused. “Most of them. But you told me to lay low, so what do you want? You want me to just go up to somebody and say, “Hey, dude, what planet am I on? What kind of magic you got going on here? You know what a Sex Mage is?” That wouldn’t be suspicious at all, would it?”

“Well, I hope it was informative for you,” said Jim. “Because you just put the boat on high alert! There are rumors going around the ship that a Lust Walker is on board. The crew hasn’t confirmed anything, so most of the passengers don’t really know, but they’re all looking around in secret! They know I’m S.O.S., so I have to help them look. I managed to convince them it wasn’t you, fooled their telepath with my illusion training, but I don’t know how long they’ll believe me.”

Casey’s brow furrowed in confusion again. “But, okay, I cast a few tease spells, but so what? I didn’t drain anyone’s life force or whatever it is they do! And going off the info I got, mages in your world get kinky all the time! Why would they just assume a Lust Walker?”

“Probably because you affected so many people at once, without anyone’s consent,” said Jim. “I don’t know if that was normal back in that Sex Mage Realm, but it stops now. Do you understand?”

Casey was having a difficult time putting up with his bossiness, but without any way of affecting him, she couldn’t really push back. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry, alright? I won’t do it again.” She sighed. “I got as much info as I needed to, anyway.”

“So you believe me that we’re on Civero? That Earth isn’t real?”

She shook her head. “I am absolutely positive Earth is real. I just… I believe you when you say we’re not on it.”

Jim calmed down a bit, his almost-snarl softening into a deep frown. “Alright. I suppose that’s good enough for now.” He backed away to give her some space.

Casey made herself relax as well. “So, did you contact your girlfriend?”

“Yes. She’s on a flight out to Hawkins Isle, so she’ll be able to meet us there. It’s on the other side of the world from our base, though, so we might make it there before she does.”

“Good. Then you can figure out how to get me back home. To Earth.”

Jim paused, then said, “We’ll figure out something. I can’t promise more than that.”

“Fine,” said Casey. The two stood awkwardly for a moment, before she said, “What’s the deal with the panic over a Lust Walker, anyway? I mean, I get that they’re dangerous, draining your life force or whatever. But I mean, I affected multiple people, if I really was feeding, it wouldn’t have been more than sips off any single person. And Sex Magic actually refreshes people. Surely everyone I affected noticed they weren’t in any danger.”

“Most people don’t know what it feels like to be drained by one, they just know the tales of their sexual prowess,” said Jim. “And anyway, even if it would have been “just a sip”, people are still going to panic. The Lust Walker condition is contagious.”

Casey blinked. “Contagious…?” she said slowly.

“Yes,” said Jim. “Whenever they drain someone, there’s a chance their victim will become a Lust Walker themselves if they aren’t killed by it. Doesn’t always happen. In fact, it usually doesn’t, especially not the first time or with such a small drain. But occasionally, one of them is especially virulent. We can’t take any chances.”

Casey stared dully at him. This time, Jim gave her the confused look. “What? What is it?”

“Jim… I don’t quite know how to say this, but…”

“Just spit it out.”

“Sex Magic is also contagious.”

Jim blinked. “Okay. So, then, you really can’t use your powers any more.”

Casey shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. God, I can’t believe this. You have to understand, every woman on Earth… or wherever I was… every woman has Sex Magic. Every adult woman. Like, I didn’t even think about it, because who bothers to anymore, you know? Everyone has it, everyone manifests it at around the same age, its easy to forget how it actually spreads.” She hesitated, looking around the stairwell out over the deck. She could see so many women on the ship.

Jim said slowly, “And how does it spread?”

 “Women gain Sex Magic just by being near Sex Mages. It spreads like, I dunno, like a radiation. Any woman who doesn’t have the magic, she just has to stand near me for a few minutes to get it.”

Jim blinked again. Then he slowly turned and likewise looked around them. He was suddenly very, very aware of how many people, how many women, were around them. None of them were near at the moment, but how many had Casey simply stood or sat by over the course of the night and evening? He turned slowly back to Casey, his face pale, but features hard as stone. He started to raise his hand, and she could see glints of light gathering at his fingertips, as though he were about to cast a spell. Casey tried to back away, but was already up against the wall.

Casey swallowed nervously and shakily said, “Jim, if you’re thinking about killing me, it’s not going to matter. It will have already spread.”

Jim stared at her, not moving, the light still dancing on his fingers. Then, the light faded, and he lowered his head. “No,” he said softly. “No, I figured. And it isn’t your fault. It’s mine.” He grit his teeth and turned away, facing the ocean. “I should have left you there.”

Casey winced at that. Even if he was right, even if part of her wished she’d never met him, hearing that line in that tone stung. “You didn’t know. You were trying to do your job. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe,” he said. He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Anyway, killing you myself wouldn’t matter now. We’re all going to die.”

Casey blinked in surprise. “What? Why?”

“Because once the women on the ship start displaying sex powers, they’re going to think it’s a Lust Walker outbreak.”

“But we can explain otherwise! Whatever the Lust Walker thing is, it isn’t the same as Sex Magic! We can prove that it’s—”

“That it’s a Fae curse? That would be almost worse.” Jim turned backed to her. “I’m not sure how much of our history you gleaned, but you need to understand. Our magic, the Lust Walkers, the Demihumans, the Fae, all of it, is tied to a great war that nearly destroyed our planet. It’s been a thousand years since then, and our people still lives in mortal terror of something like that happening again. Magic has only been coming back to Civero for about fifty or so years, and right when magic came back, that’s when monsters started reappearing in the wilds, that’s when the Lust Walker curse resurged, that’s when people started getting kidnapped by the Fae again. Whenever an old temple or ruin is discovered still holding artifacts from the war, or the era before it, we bury it. Whenever a new creature comes along to threat us, we eradicate it.”

Jim was almost shaking as he ran his hand through his hair. “The Lust Walkers were a biological weapon designed to wipe out civilian populations and gut the ranks of soldiers fighting to save the planet. We don’t know how it came back; we thought it gone after the war, but somehow, it must have stayed dormant through all the years we went without magic in the world. But however it returned, it is the law in every country for the nearest capable person, or even mob of people if it comes to that, to kill Lust Walkers on sight. Police, military, civilian, it’s everyone’s duty.”

“Jesus,” said Casey. Part of her wanted to doubt such an extreme description, but she was in no position to argue. “So… so it’s going to be a witch hunt, then? They won’t stop until they’ve confirmed a Walker is on board?”

Jim let out a humorless laugh. “Hunt? No. If your power spreads like you say, and the whole ship becomes Sex Mages? They’ll just blow us up with a missile strike before we even see land. Assuming the crew doesn’t just deliberately sink the ship.”

Casey gawked at him. “Seriously? They’ll seriously do that?”

Jim nodded. “Authorities have turned whole towns into smoking craters, have sunk small islands to stop a Lust Walker outbreak that went too far. They’ve done the same for other threats. They call it the Annihilation Protocol. A single cruise ship, out in the middle of the sea? If the authorities hear about an outbreak, they won’t even hesitate.” He walked away from the stairwell nook, to the railing that bordered the whole of the ship. Looking out into the ocean again, he said, “How long do we have?”

Casey joined him at the railing. “If I remember correctly, it’s about two days from catching the magic to it manifesting. So, a day and a half from now, I guess.” She paused. “Assuming your days are the same as mine.”

“Still think you’re from Earth?”

“Positive.”

“I guess, even if we weren’t going to get blown up, there wouldn’t be a way to take you back anyway.”

Casey paused. “You don’t have to stay here, you know,” she said. “Men don’t get the magic, and they don’t spread it. You could teleport away from here.”

Jim frowned. “I wouldn’t just ditch everyone.”

“Getting killed over sentiment isn’t going to help anything,” she said. “Maybe you could take as many of the men with you as you could.”

“Would be too hard to explain,” he said. “Besides, I’m on record as being here now. If I suddenly popped up alive, with a bunch of guys that were supposed to be blown up on a Lust Walker-infested ship, we’d just get arrested and probably executed just to be safe.”

“Your world sounds horrible,” said Casey.

“Well, it’s a lot less dangerous if you just stick to civilization and try to live a normal life,” he said. “If something does pop up within those areas, that’s what the SOS and the police are for.”

“I see,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “Guess there’s no way to call your teammates for some miracle save?”

“I doubt the military will give them time,” said Jim.

“Well, I don’t want to die,” she said.

“You think I do?”

“Well, it’s your world, you’re the monster hunter, so think of something!”

“I’m trying!”

“Not hard enough! If you think I’m going to stick around and let myself get killed, forget it,” she said. “If you think it’s perfectly fine to let yourself get blown up with this ship, that’s on you. I know I’m not a Lust Walker, I don’t plan of just throwing my life away.”

Jim turned to her, his expression hardening. “I cannot allow you to leave the ship. If you spread your power to the rest of the world, there’s no telling the chaos it will cause. What if an actual Lust Walker get empowered with your abilities? We have no idea what effect that will be.”

“Maybe it would work out. You say they feed on magic, too, right? Well, Sex Mages absorb Lust Energy. Maybe my power could be a sort of cure. Give Lust Walkers the magic, and it might let them feed off the Lust Energy without having to drain the person’s life force. And even if it did, the Energy and Magic sustain the user and target, keeping them alive and healthy in what should be lethal situations. Maybe the two magics will neutralize each other.”

“Or amplify them into something worse,” said Jim. “Besides, if only women can get the Magic, that won’t help the male Lust Walkers.”

Casey was almost surprised at that. The idea of men with sexual powers hadn’t even occurred to her. “Well, either way, I’m not going to just take a bullet for you. If I absolutely have to, I’ll steal a couple of guys and go live in a cabin somewhere in the woods.” Internally, she winced at the thought, but at the moment, it sounded better than getting blown to bits.

Sparks of light started gathering along his fingers again. “Do not make me do this,” he said. “If they opt not to strike the ship until tomorrow, I should be able to contact my team and figure something out. I may be able to get them to stall, to anchor the ship away from the island and buy us some time to figure out a solution.”

Casey also extended her power, thankful that her magic was invisible. But she didn’t bother trying to use it on Jim. “From the way you described it, it doesn’t sound like that’s likely. You made it sound like they’ll just blast the ship without even negotiating. Are you sure you can stall them?”

Jim hesitated, looking to the side.

Casey frowned. “I didn’t think so.” Then, with a silent command, she made the two men she’d just snagged with her power strike Jim in the back of the head, hard enough to knock him out. Jim slammed face first onto the deck, bloodying his nose. Behind him were two of the men Casey had teased and psychically probed, currently sporting intense erections. Having already established a connection, she had sensed them close by and had been able to reassert her power over them much more quickly and efficiently a second time. Even still, they were straining to fight her commands and run, or at least cry out for help. She didn’t allow them to do either.

Instead, she commanded them to pick Jim up, then floated them both high up in the air, quick enough that nobody saw them. When they were high enough in the air to be specks, she then moved them away from the ship, shooting them in the opposite direction the boat was travelling. Her maximum range with a man she had only recently gained control over was only two or three miles, at best. She kept flying them until they were just at the edge of her power, then let the trio drop. She caught them again a few feet above the water, before her power cut out, and they splashed harmlessly into the sea. The two men, now freed from her control, were able to start treading water, and tried to shake Jim awake.

By the time they managed it, the ship would be out of sight, and they’d have hopefully lost track of where it had gone. If not, she’d figure something else out. As she turned and walked towards the ships forward, where more and more passengers were milling about, ready to start another day of relaxation. She glanced back out to sea and considered. They should be much closer to land, by now. She reached out with her power to connect to one of the cocks she had teased the day before. Specifically, she located one of the crew members. She coaxed him to have to run to the bathroom for a sudden session of desperate masturbation. The helpless sailor frantically dashed into a stall, locked himself inside, and yanked down his pants, hand jerking away before his waistband even hit the floor. He fell back in his seat and groaned as he desperately attempted to relieve the priaspism-inducing levels of arousal her magic made him feel.

She sifted through his mind again, allowing herself to calm down and take the time necessary to ease through the psychic haze that usually clouded men’s sexual thoughts. It was difficult with such a fresh guy, but she only really needed a specific bit of information: just how far they were from their destination.

To her relief, while they were still a day and a half away from Hawkins Isle, there was a smaller island called Elgle a little bit closer, which held a smaller resort town. She coaxed the sailor to stop jerking off, making him pull his pants back up, then carefully puppetted him to her. His eyes widened as he realized she was the one controlling him. She’d clamped down his mouth so he couldn’t call for help, however. Casey glanced around, noticing there were people nearby. She chewed her lip for a moment, then sighed. There was nothing for it. She grabbed the sailor, standing on his feet, and had him hold her tightly, locking her securely to him. Then, she used her power to lift him into the air, shooting him high up into the sky, higher than she’d sent Jim and the two men. Hoping she was interpreting the helpless crewman’s sea-travelling memories correctly, she shot off into the distance, outpacing the cruise ship quickly. Even if she was spotted, she’d be out of site soon enough, and then she could lose herself in the tourism traffic once she reached Elgle Isle. And then…

…then…

…well, she’d figure out something from there. Hopefully.

EIGHT

As Jim exited the hospital doors, he barely had time to brace himself before Violet practically tackled him with a bear hug. They didn’t say anything, his psychic girlfriend throwing open their mental link and just letting the emotions and thoughts flood them both. Love and relief and desire and joy made them the only two people in the whole world for nearly a full minute.

Then someone cleared their throat, and the two broke away, a psychic thread still connecting them, but Violet letting them zone back into their surroundings again. Jim looked up to see Jason, dressed in his usual dark suit and cape. Jim let his mind open up to him as well, and with a glance, Jason was apprised of the situation.

After talking to Casey, Jim had found himself floating in the water with two other guys from the ship. He’d had a concussion, but with few other options, had opted to start teleporting them towards land, going straight for Hawkins Isle. Upon reaching it, he blacked out, where upon the other men got him help, rushing him to a hospital.

Violet tenderly touched his head. He smiled at her and kissed her, and grateful emotions passed between them again. The hospital had thankfully had three biomancers on staff, and they’d easily fixed his concussion. Pulling away, Jim looked to Jason, saying, “Well, I assume your reported the ship?”

“We did,” Jason confirmed, nodding. “The cruise ship has been quarantined, and is being kept ten kilometers off shore. The Iterun Defense Force has specialists checking everyone over, and so far, she hasn’t been found. One of the crewmen has gone missing, however.”

Jim sighed. “She must have jumped off. Probably grabbed one of the sailors to fly away, and read his mind to figure out where to go. So she’s likely already here.”

“Actually, we suspect she may have fled to Elgle Isle,” said Jason. “It was closer than Hawkins to the ship at the time. We contacted the Iterun branch of the S.O.S. and they’ve already been looking for her. No success, though.”

Jim thought for a moment. “I was knocked out for a while,” he said. “Long enough something should have happened on the ship. Any signs of the magic?”

“None, actually,” said Violet. “Assuming she told you the truth, then it might not be quite long enough for the power to manifest if it has spread. But at the very least, everyone’s come up clean from the Lust Walker curse. We advised the IDF to detain them for one more day, and watch for any signs of sexual magic being used. If no one demonstrates any symptoms, as it were, we should be in the clear.”

Jim frowned in thought. “Strange. Of course, she was in a Fae Realm, and she didn’t even remember for how long. Maybe Sex Magic doesn’t actually spread like she thinks.”

Jason stroked his thin goatee. “Better safe than sorry. We need to find her. Even if she proves unable to pass the magic along, her powers, and her situation, could easy lead to trouble.”

“I’ll head to Elgle,” said Jim. “I’ve figured out how to block her power, so I should be safe from it. She only got me last time because he caught me off guard.”

“I’m going with you,” said Violet, grabbing his hand and giving it an affectionate squeeze.

“I would advise against it,” said Jason. “Until we know for certain that the power can’t be spread, we don’t want you catching it, either.”

“But—!”

“I shall accompany him,” said Jason. “If her power can be deflected by shadowmancer shields, then my own psychic blocks should afford me adequate protection.”

“The power is partially biomancy, too,” said Jim. “Or something like it.”

“Hmm.” Jason stroked his goatee again. “I can guard against some level of biomantic power. I am willing to risk it; I’d rather you not go off alone again.”

Violet frowned. She almost protested again, but truthfully, if there was anyone she’d trust her boyfriend’s life with even more than herself, it was Jason.

“Alright,” said Jim. He hugged and kissed Violet. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.” She nodded.

“I will keep you appraised,” said Jason. “In the meantime, I’d like you to contact the IDF and keep us updated on their progress.”

“Okay,” said Violet, looking a little nervous at the idea. Jason was usually the one to talk to the authorities.

So saying, the trio left the hospital grounds, Jason using his power to levitate them in the air. After dropping Violet off at a pre-arranged hotel, the two men flew towards to ocean to reach Elgle Isle.

***

Two days passed as Jim and Jason scoured the island. However, there was no sign of Casey. All travel to and from the island had been halted, and despite assistance from the Iterun branch of the S.O.S., there was no trace of the mysterious woman. They did find the sailor she’d kidnapped to fly away from the ship, but he remembered nothing of what had happened to him.

Fortunately, it seemed that Sex Magic was not, in fact, contagious, as Casey had claimed. The quarantine on the ship was lifted, and travel to and from Elgle was resumed.

“Guess we dodged one hell of a bullet,” said Violet, as the two men reunited with their teammate. The three now sat in a cheap hotel room, ruminating over the events.

“We still don’t know that,” said Jim, sighing as he sat heavily on the hotel bed. “She must have slipped out just before we started the search. We found the kidnapped sailor there, but she could have just grabbed another guy.”

“Then I guess, she’s gone,” said Violet. “Unless she goes crazy and does something that gets her reported, I don’t know what more we can do. If we’re lucky, she’ll just lay low and not cause any trouble.”

Jim gave his girlfriend a pained look. “But what if she does ever encounter a Lust Walker? Or worse?” He sighed dejectly. “So fucking stupid. I never even found the original guy we were looking for, but I ended up bringing a possible ticking time bomb to our planet.”

Jason frowned and stroked his beard again. “Anyone contacted by the Fae is a potential ticking time bomb. Even us, for all we try to defend against them.”

Jim scowled. “Small comfort.” He lay back on the bed. Violet took his hand again, and tried to use a bit of psychic power to ease his sense of anxiety. Jim wouldn’t have it, however, and blocked her attempt almost on instinct. Violet frowned deeply at that.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over him. “Come on. Don’t do this to yourself. Nothing has happened. Nothing probably will happen. If it does, it’ll just be one of a million possible crises that the SOS was created to stop. We’ll handle it. I promise.”

“That’s not that reassuring,” he said. “I never wanted to be in this organization in the first place. I’m not cut out for it.”

Violet cupped his cheek. “Don’t say that. You’re a good man. You’ve only had your powers for a year, and you’re already better at them than most.”

“And I had to get raped to get them, remember?” he said. He sighed in disgust. “You know, even if Sex Magic never spreads, even if she never encounters a Lust Walker or nothing comes of it if she does, I saw the world she was in. I saw how she just casually used people. I’ve unleashed another Sarah on the world.”

“I doubt that,” said Jason. “I can only go off your memories, but it would seem she acted mostly out of a sense of self-defense. I suppose it’s possible she’ll become a problem, but my impression is that she’ll realize her error and be more cautious.”

Violet sighed. “So, do you suppose she was really from another planet? Earth, was it?”

“The Fae Realm is beyond time and space. We know other worlds exist, as we know Temael has stolen many. I could easily believe she’s from another world.”

“But she was human,” said Jim. “She spoke Grannin for fuck’s sake.”

Jason shrugged. “We won’t know unless we can find her and question her ourselves. If she is, however, there’s not much we can do about it.”

Violet frowned. “I’m not defending what she did, but I do pity her a bit. If she is from another world, she could have a rough time adapting to this one. A stranger in a strange land.”

----------------------------

NOTES: This was initially conceived of and written as a crossover between the Sex Mage World and the World of Civero. However, I was unable to finish that story, and have since removed it from this blog. A few years later, I would do a hard reboot of the SMW continuity, eliminating all crossovers from that canon, whilst setting up Dellissa's World as an alternative for the more fantastical elements I didn't want to leave behind.

I was still intrigued by the idea of the crossover, so I went back and re-wrote the entire “The Stranger” story almost from scratch, using Dellissa's Sex Mage Island Realm for the crossover instead. I feel this was actually a much more logical crossover, given the Fae’s history with Civero, and Dellissa being well established as such a kidnapper in other stories. This is one those cases where I really kick myself for not thinking of certain ideas before I started writing certain stories; Dellissa’s World is such an obvious sub-setting for Civero, and yet I didn’t even think of it until, what, five years after first attempting to write “The Stranger?”

Ultimately, I ended up getting stuck at around the same point, and so the "ending" to this tale is yet another hastily cobbled together slap-dash cap off. Even still, its a more complete story than the original version, and I think overall is a much better take.